Douglas Lindsay

Douglas John Lindsay, Captain (1941-2025)

This page is based on his obituary in FRM 273.

Born in Leith, he left public school at fifteen to study at Leith Nautical College before beginning life at sea as a cadet in 1957 with Clan Line. On their cargo liners he visited Africa, India, and Australia. In the nineteen sixties he worked as a deck officer on a variety of ships, both passenger and freighters until at the end of the decade he was on Ro-Ro ferries. At the age of 28 he was the youngest person to be appointed as a master in the British merchant fleet.

In 1971 he was one of the founding members of the Nautical Institute. This charity supports the global maritime community promoting higher standards of professionalism, safety etc. By the end of the seventies Douglas was General Manager and Director of the family shipping line. This was a role which included port agency and management of stevedoring. He was for a brief period a ship owner. By the late 1980 Douglas had become a consultant in charge of a consultancy group operating in the fields of business development, macro-economic studies and labour relations for ports and shipping. Using all this experience in the early naughties he founded a company which focused on repossessions, dispute resolution, port operations and safety. For many years Douglas in addition to his busy professional life was a reserve officer of the Royal Navy.

For more than twenty years he was a keen sailor in sail boats of all sorts. He gave a fascinating presentation on this subject to FRS Bristol Area Group in 2017. He became one of very few Britons to hold a master's ticket for steam and for sail including square rigged vessels. Sail training was a significant part of these sailing activities including skippering tall ships. He, in his later years, was Chairman of Shirehampton Sea Cadets with their HQ beside the River Avon just above the M5 Avon Bridge.

In the 1990s Douglas began volunteering as a trainee fireman on the FR. For some years he was part of the Team X working in the carriage works and travelling to the FR from Weston in his Morris Minor Traveller. He joined FRS Bristol Area Group in 2001 and became Chairman in 2003. Douglas ran a tight ship and his efforts were blessed with the area group being a thriving concern, albeit without running working parties at the FR but a high proportion of the membership were current or former volunteers. Without doubt his efforts on behalf of Bristol Area Group were the most significant contribution he made to the FR family.